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39 Cards in this Set
- Front
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what began americas involvement in vietnam |
the cold war relations and the domino theory |
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what was the cold war |
a state of military and political tension between the USA and the USSR that lasted from 1945-1990 and it did not involve fighting.
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what was communism |
a theory of organization in which all property is owned by the community and every person contributes in it to the ability that they need
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what was capitalism |
an economic system in which a country’s trade is controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.
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What was the domino theory |
that if one country fell into communism, the rest would too.
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why did america want to stop communism |
believing that capitalism and a democracy was the best way of running a country
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why was the cold war a significant cause |
it was the only reason that America was in Vietnam. |
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ho chi minh was regarded as a nationalist but why did people see him as communist |
but the americans saw him a communist fighting for a communist Vietnam. Because of these different views, America thought that he was only fighting for communism, but because he was only fighting for freedom, his motives were stronger than the American government so he was never going to give in and it was right. |
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why was vietnam involved with the french |
wanted to restore their power and this led to fighting in Viet Minh under the command of Ho Chi Minh and the french until 1954. |
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what did the french do to end the war |
the French were given 385 million to end the war in a battle called Dien Bien phu that lasted for 55 days and the french surrendered,which was a humiliating defeat. |
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how did the cold war relations and the domino theory lead to the tet offensive |
this is what began America’s long and initial involvement in Vietnam |
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what was the purpose of the geneva confrence |
Another cause that led to the TET offensive was the outcomes of the Geneva Conference. This happened in 1954 and it was held to find a way to settle the issues in Korea, Vietnam, Indochina. This was to determine the fate of the vietnam war |
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what 9 nations attended the confrence but did not have a say |
France, Britain, USSR China and America. The affected countries attended but did not have a say. |
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when did it occur in 1954 |
months after the Battle of Dien Phu where Ho Chi Minh and his army were victorious after 55 days of defeating the French. |
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What outcomes did the geneva confrence have after negotiating vietnams fate (give the first one) |
One was splitting Vietnam up into the North and South along the 17th parallel. The people in Vietnam were given approximately 300 to move to either side of Vietnam and about 10,000 people moved to the South Vietnam part. |
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What was the other outcome of the geneva confrence |
was to be a reunification election in two years time(in 1956) because they believed that the country would fall under the communist rule which the Americans did not want to happen. |
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How was the geneva confrence a cause to the TET offensive |
it eventually led to further American involvement and it would shift their economic involvement to political or military involvement which led to the TET offensive. Because of this they looked for an anti communist leader who was otherwise known as Ngo Dinh Diem. The outcomes of the the Geneva conference meant that the Americans got a lot more involved and this led to the TET offensive. |
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Why was diem unpopular |
he was a very cruel and nepotistic person |
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How was he cruel? what did he do? |
This was because he did things like destroy 16,000 villages that were suspected of being supportive of Viet Minh and he replaced elected village chiefs with appointments from Saigon, which was Nepotism . |
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what did this make people believe |
that history was 'repeating itself' |
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what was the strategic hamlet programme |
was made to protect the villagers from the Viet Cong and it involved relocating the villagers from areas which they knew that the Viet Cong was active. This made many peasants complain of the harsh treatment that they suffered from in the hands of the soldiers who removed them because it made them feel alienated. This made Diem feel isolated even more. |
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When his cruelty came back to him when was he assasinated |
in 1963 |
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how did Diem's overthrow and cruelty lead to the tet offensive |
it was strengthening support for the Viet Minh/Cong, destabilising South Vietnam and causing Johnson to escalate US involvement. |
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what was the gulf of tonkin incident |
This incident involved many US boats stationed in the Gulf of Tonkin being attacked by the North Vietnamese forces unprovoked. |
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what did this cause president Johnson to do |
take immediate action causing him to introduce the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which was approved by the congress on August 7th. The resolution was an official declaration of war on North Vietnam and allowed him to send ground troops for the very first time. |
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How many ground troops were there in 1968 leading to us tactics in vietnam |
500,000 |
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What did the Us Tactics involved |
The tactics involved the Vietnam soldiers burning down villages, killing their livestock, and dropping chemicals such as Agent Orange that caused skin diseases, birth defects and cancer. |
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What did this make johnson do? |
give morale justification to declare war on vietnam allowing him to completely escalate the war and increase viet cong troops |
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how did this lead to the tet offensive |
it gave viet cong an enemy to fight for |
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what happened during the tet offensive |
The TET offensive was a series of surprise attacks that occurred on about 126 cities in South Vietnam. This was the turning point of Vietnam which put the Viet Cong in a prominent position. This happened in 1968 on January 31st(which was the Lunar New Year). This saw a sudden shift in the US tactic by the Viet Cong to all out the war. The TET offensive was a result in the capture of the ship Hue, and held the US embassy in Saigon for 5 hours which resulted in the death of 5 of the US soldiers. This shocked the Americans as they saw it as an attack on their sovereignty. This was a loss for the Viet Cong with the death of 500,000 men, was a psychological victory. Up until the point where the Americans thought that they were going to win, at this time it was the opposite. The TET offensive was the turning point of the Vietnam war, and from that point on they started to favour the Viet Cong.
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why were the us troops increased |
This was when the American troops realized that the vietnam war was just ‘hopeless’ and so they began making rash decisions which reflected a growing sense of anger with the direction that the war was going. |
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what was the my lai massacre |
This was when about 500 innocent men women and children were either murdered, raped or tortured and the village was even burnt down. The US military tried to cover up the damage, and create lies about what has happened during the massacre. A few years later,the Americans found out the truth and were very outraged. |
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what did the american view the vietnam veterans as and what did they question |
After the incident, the Americans began viewing the Vietnam veterans as ‘baby killers’ and America was questioned why America was even in Vietnam in the first place. Apparently, they were trying to protect the citizens of Vietnam from communism, but then the just ended up killing innocent Vietnamese citizens. |
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what did president johnson cite over the direction of the war |
‘irreconcilable differences’ |
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how did the public change their opinion on johnson |
At first the public thought that he was the ‘most trusted man in America’ but when the Vietnam war met its turning point they had then realized that they needed a peace settlement to help put the Vietnam war to an end. In which he failed to do so. |
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why did johnson step down |
health reasons |
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who was president nixon |
Nixon was anti communist and and he believed that the US involvement in Vietnam was necessary. |
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what did nixon promise to do |
achieve peace with honour. Nixon had a secret agenda and that was that he was going to escalate the war. He continued peace talks that were initiated by johnson . |
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how did Nixon intensify the war |
by seeing America’s involvement in Vietnam as part of the democratic world’s global commitment to continuing the threat of communism. It was predicted that the Vietnam war would continue on for 7 years and they would owe Vietnam 65 billion dollars for the damage of the war. So he started a plan to slowly decrease number of US troop levels in Vietnam otherwise known as Vietnamization. But unfortunately this did not go as planned and the war was then expanded into the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia. |
